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LOOKING BACK AT CHRIS BENOIT: THE ECW ERA

I wish I had answers for those calling and wondering. I have no answers. That's all anyone who cares about this business, works in this business or follows this business can say today in the wake of this tragedy. No answers.

My heart goes out to Chris Benoit's parents, his friends, and his children in Canada. My heart goes out to his co-workers, who must now all go and perform in his honor when its likely the last thing any of them want to do. My heart goes out to the family and friends of Nancy Benoit, who we all watched perform as The Fallen Angel, Woman and Robin Green in Florida, ECW, and WCW.

I want to write something profound. I wish I was that gifted as a writer, but the truth is, no one is that skilled. So, instead, I'm going to just write about my favorite time of Chris Benoit's career, from the perspective of someone who loved his work and was, is, and always will be, a Chris Benoit fan. It's all I know how to do. I have no answers to give. I hope you enjoy one fan's remembrance.

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Although he went on to headline in WCW and WWE, even main eventing Wrestlemania 20 in Madison Square Garden, Chris Benoit, to me, was always an ECW guy. The truth is that Benoit didn't spend anywhere near as much time in the original Extreme Championship Wrestling as the other "ECW Originals" but when he debuted for the company in August 1994, I don't think there ever was a match between a promotion and wrestler as the potential for Benoit in ECW.

Benoit, already a huge star internationally for New Japan under his masked persona of the Pegasus Kid and later unmasked by rival Jushin Liger as Wild Pegasus, had been working a series of shows for the late Dennis Coraluzzo in Woodbury, New Jersey. In three straight months, Benoit, the shining beacon of hope for hardcore wrestling fans when hardcore meant you read the newsletters and traded tapes with your pen pals, worked dream matches against Sabu, Terry Funk and even Jerry Lawler. I can recall attending the Funk match and being blown away at how these two not only tore apart the building with a brawl through the Woodbury Armory but left welts the size of the George Washington Bridge across each other's chest with chop after chop.

I was amazing. Terry Funk was and always will be the greatest when it came to in-ring performances and the emotional attachment between a performer and his audience, but Chris Benoit was THE MAN. He was a wrestling machine, he was work ethic come to life and he was carrying on the tradition of the great Stampede wrestlers like Bret Hart, Dynamite Kid and Owen Hart. The chops, the technical prowess, the swan dive headbutt. Benoit was the performer you could point to when people mocked why you loved wrestling; he was the throwback technical wizard during an era where it was all about steroids, cartoons, and legdrops.

When Benoit came to ECW in August 1994, the little promotion that could was on fire, although at that point it was something that very few people outside of Philadelphia knew about. Benoit debuted, losing in the first round of the NWA championship tournament as he and 2 Cold Scorpio, familiar with each other from New Japan and WCW, tore the building down in an amazing match. I just pulled out a photo album that I kept from those days, looking at the Terry Funk and Scorpio bouts, and got chills. It still seems like yesterday to me even though it was 13 years ago. I can still vividly remember chanting "Pegasus" at Benoit, being furious that my favorite performer was pinned by Scorpio and come to think of it, I'm furious to this day that ECW never released the match on tape.

That night was important for many reasons. Shane Douglas tossed the NWA title down and created the ECW World title. It was the last Eastern Championship Wrestling event, as the change-over to the Extreme name would be announced the following Tuesday. It was the night Mikey Whipwreck became a bonafide star, teaming with Mick Foley to win the ECW World Tag Team championships. It was the night Dean Malenko debuted for ECW as well, going to the second round against eventual tournament winner Shane Douglas.

To the surprise of everyone, it was announced the next day that Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko and the other tournament competitors would be part of the ECW TV taping the next day, which was free for all those in attendance. During that period, ECW was lucky to have 200 people at the TV taping, which were secondary to the "ECW Arena" shows, but a free show with all that talent sounded too good to pass up. We made the trek back and forth to Philadelphia, even if smarter logic would have said to crash in a hotel room. Benoit wrestled a fun match with Chad Austin, who still works in the Maryland scene.

Due to Japanese commitments, Benoit didn't return until October although it was going to be worth the wait. It was going to be a dream match, Benoit vs. Sabu for the first time ever in ECW. The consensus among fans was that if that match was good outside of ECW, wait until we got to see it in the Bingo Hall. There was just something special about that dilapidated place. It made wrestling better.

The match was good although handicapped by Sabu (then in his prime as the insane daredevil aerial artist), breaking his ribs the night before in a match with Cactus Jack. Sensing fans were disappointed with the finish, which saw the referee stop the match due to Sabu's injuries, ECW announced a "ECW Death Match" for the November to Remember 1994.

That year's ECW flagship show was beyond fun. The blinded Sandman tricked Tommy Dreamer and beat the living hell out of him, Steve Austin's ECW debut was announced, Shane Douglas defended the ECW title against Ron Simmons, and Public Enemy won back their precious tag straps from Cactus and Mikey in their signature match, The Brawlgame. There were so many other good, fun matches in a great, fun atmosphere that I can't begin to name them all. It was a special time. When it came time for the main event, everyone was salivating over finally getting to see these two really go at it.

Anyone who knows history, of course, knows what happened.

In one of the most replayed moments in ECW history, just minutes into the bout, Benoit jettisoned Sabu into the air and down he came on his head, breaking his neck. To this day, Lord knows what the spot was going to be but the invincible Sabu was down and out. I'll never forget that moment of the chaos that followed, mainly because I missed it. In the era before digital cameras, I was in the midst of changing a roll of film and suddenly everyone gasped as I had my head down. I looked up and Sabu was outside. Before I even had a chance to figure out what had happened, 911 chokeslammed Benoit and the referee counted three as manager/booker Paul Heyman screamed, "NO! NO! NO!" at the ring while checking on Sabu. From there, the entire locker room erupted into a brawl in the stands, which settled into Benoit vs. Scorpio in a match neither planned for and called in the ring as Sabu was rushed out. In the midst of the chaos, it was only a good match that had no finish but if it was anyone else in the ring, fans wouldn't have even gotten that.

ECW smartly exploited the incident, deeming Chris Benoit "The Crippler." He was soon teaming with "The Shooter" Dean Malenko and formed a trio, in theory at least, as the original Triple Threat with Shane Douglas.

The Triple Threat did several angles in Florida with 2 Cold Scorpio and Tully Blanchard. It was probably the only time all three did anything together on television.

With all the ECW TV and storyline exposure behind him, Benoit returned to Philadelphia for ECW in February 1995 for "Double Tables" where he wrestled Al Snow in as perfect a wrestling match you could ever hope to see on any stage. To this day, it was still Snow's finest hour in my opinion.

Sabu and Taz ended up with the tag straps at Double Tables, defeating Public Enemy in the first-ever Tables match ever held in wrestling. After the match, Benoit returned to try and finish off his rival Sabu, powerbombing him off the top rope, where a table was lodged over the top turnbuckle onto and through the late Flyboy Rocco Rock, who was laying prone on a table after losing. In one fell swoop, Benoit had ruined the new Tag champions' party, tried to finally take out his rival Sabu and made enemies out of Public Enemy to boot. The build to what was then going to be ECW's biggest night, The Three-Way Dance had begun.

Benoit then got his first taste of truly cutting promos in the United States. Rubbing his hands together and speakly slowly and darkly, Benoit would discuss those he had wrestled. "Al Snow, they said you were the up and coming star of this business. We disagree." He would go on and on, discussing Hack Meyers, Tully Blanchard, Taz and Sabu, all of those he crossed paths with. Benoit's promo on ECW TV promised that he and Malenko would win the tag titles and to this day, was probably one of the better interviews ever cut by a guy who was never well known for doing excellent interviews.

Several weeks later, at the Return of the Funker event, Benoit and Malenko confronted The Public Enemy who claimed their belts were stolen by Sabu and Taz. After attacking them, Benoit and Malenko were jumped by Sabu and Taz. They "injured" Taz's leg and he was carried out of the match by 911. Sabu, the top star of the company, was left in a handicap situation against two of the best wrestlers in the world and in the end, despite his dives and crazy offense, fell and was pinned during a time period where a pinfall over Sabu in ECW meant you were one of the top dogs. PE hit the ring, followed by Taz and a six way brawl was on. ECW's booking was beyond perfect during that time period. Some of it doesn't hold up over time and scrutiny but if you were there, in the monent, it was impossible not to be swept up in the insanity and emotion.

Due to Benoit's New Japan schedule, the match was bounced around and finally settled on 4/8/05. The storyline had helped turn PE babyfaces en route to becoming the first homegrown talents to become true stars for the company. The chess pieces were all in place, but the most important piece of talent in ECW during that time was nowhere to be found.

Sabu didn't show as he was in, ironically, New Japan. Paul Heyman fired him publicly, Benoit called Sabu a "P*ssy" on the house mic, which was strong language even for ECW then and Rick Steiner was brought in as the surprise. PE ended up with the tag straps in an anticlimactic match. Sabu returned to ECW in November of that year, but the feud with Benoit, one that held such great promise, was never revisited.

Benoit quietly disappeared from ECW, and as it turned out, that was largely due to the disorganization of the company as border officials quickly caught onto why Benoit was heading back and forth from Canada, where he lived at the time, to Philadelphia. He was warned he could be banned from entering the country and that was pretty much all she wrote. I can remember one evening where the planned main event was Benoit & Scorpio & Malenko vs. Eddie Guerrero & The Steiners. My word, imagine that match in 1995 with all those performers in their prime - it sounds too ridiculous to be true. It was. ECW announced Benoit had transportation problems (well, he did, he couldn't legally transport himself into the country!), so it ended up being Scorpio & Malenko & a newly heel Cactus Jack as the villains. It was a good, fun match and shockingly, it hasn't popped up on DVD yet, but it was nowhere near what the original plan could have accomplished.

In August 1995, word leaked that ECW's best in-ring performers, Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko would head to WCW. To say that if you were an ECW fan when this news broke, you thought it was the end of the company was an understatement. As irony has it, when those three (and Perry Saturn) bolted from WCW in 2000, it was the end of WCW's heart and soul, but that's another story.

Malenko and Guerrero were in the midst of a classic feud for the ECW TV title. Their final match received a standing ovation as they went to a good, not great draw in a Best of Three Falls match. The hardened ECW Arena couldn't help but to cry and wish them the best of luck, hoping without hope that they'd be back one day. They never were.

Later that night, The Steiners were slated to wrestle 2 Cold Scorpio and a mystery partner. The ECW Arena, already emotionally spent by the departure of their heroes, was stunned when out walked Benoit, who had been absent for so many months. Benoit and Scorpio had a great match with the Steiners, who eventually pinned "The Crippler" in what was to be his final ECW appearance.

It's been forgotten by the history and legend of the Malenko/Guerrero farewell, but Benoit took the mic and thanked everyone in Philadelphia and bid them farewell. It was a special moment, one of my favorite moments in wrestling history, made even more special to me because it wasn't one that was widely remembered or re-broadcast. My favorite performer, THE MAN, was on his way to the big time.

As the years went on, Benoit became a member of the Four Horsemen, a legitimate main eventer in WCW against Kevin Sullivan and even jumped to the most unlikely company one would think he'd fit into as a top name, The WWF. Like he did elsewhere, Benoit succeeded. In 2004, he worked the entire Royal Rumble in, coincidentally, the city of Brotherly Love, just a short drive from the ECW Arena. That earned him the main event of Wrestlemania XX.

I was lucky enough to bear witness live as Benoit defeated Shawn Michaels and Triple H, a year removed from his return from neck fusion surgery, in Madison Square Garden. Every time Benoit had HHH in the Crippler Crossface, I an not kidding in the least when I say EVERYONE IN THE CROWD was jumping up and down screaming for H to tap. When he finally did, fans were screaming and leaping and hugging. The PPV never did the moment justice. As the confetti fell to the ground, Wrestlemania ended with Benoit and long-time friend Eddie Guerrero hugging. The only thing that could have made a truly amazing moment even more perfect would have been Dean Malenko alongside his best friends. It was the peak of Benoit's career and his life. It was something special beyond words for fans of true, hardcore wrestling. Wrestling made of work ethic and athletics, not characterizations.

For this fan though, 1995, was my favorite Benoit era and I'll always look back on it with fondness, now moreso than ever. Benoit added a level of credibility to ECW when he was there and would have done so again for the ECW brand WWE now promotes had time told a different story.

God Bless Chris, Nancy and Daniel Benoit, and their friends, family, and fans.

Mike Johnson can be reached at Mike@PWInsider.com.

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